still
festers, fifty years on. We've won since, but not when it really
mattered, on our own soil, in our own stadium, in front of our own
people."
Adriano nodded. Lisandra had folded a page from her origami book into
two red rabbits, fucking. She jiggled them in the edge of Marcelina's
vision.
"No, I like this," the director of programming announced.
"It's edgy, noisy, divisive—we'd run an SMS
guilty/innocent vote. It's absolutely Canal Quatro. IPTRB."
It presses the right buttons , Marcelina guessed.
"List shows have always performed well for us," the Black
Plumed Bird said, inclining her head a degree toward Lisandra.
"All-Time Greatest Seleção would get people
talking." Celso had folded a sheet from his book into a green
penis, which he slowly erected in Lisandra's direction.
"No, thank you all," Adriano said, pushing himself back a
fraction from the glass table. Anticipation cracked around the room
like indoor lightning. "I knew you'd do it. Okay, IRTAMD."
I'm Ready to Announce My Decision.
"The universe has ten to the one hundred and twenty calculations
left to perform," said Heitor, feet on his desk in his corner
office, gazing out at the traffic headed beach-ward and the rectangle
of gold and blue on blue at its end, like a flag of jubilee. "Then
it all stops and everything ends and it's dark and cold and it goes
on expanding forever until everything is infinitely far apart from
everything else. You know, I am sure I'm developing a wheat allergy."
"You could say, 'Well done, Marcelina, congratulations,
Marcelina, killer pitch, Marcelina, I'll take you out and buy you
champagne at the Cafe Barrbosa, Marcelina.'''
The newsroom was accustomed to Marcelina Hoffman bursting out of
scruffy, bitchy Popular Factual into their clean, focused atmosphere
of serious journalism like a cracked exhaust muffler, striding
thunder-faced between the rows of hotdesks to Heitor's little sanctum
where he contemplated his role as the bringer of bad tidings to
millions and the futility of the news media in general. The door
would close, the rants would start, the stringers would put their
heads down or look up holidays online. So when she came in grinning
as if she had done six lines off a toilet seat, small tits pushed out
and golden curls bouncing, the newsroomers were momentarily
flustered. No yells from Heitor's office. Everyone in the building,
let alone the eighth floor, knew they were occasionally fucking; the
mystery was why. A few understood that a relationship can be born out
of a necessity not to have sex with anyone who needed to have sex
with you. They kept the insight to themselves. They feared they would
have to play that card themselves someday.
"Fully funded development and a complete proposal in two weeks
moving to a commission green light before the end of the month. Am I
fucking hot or what?"
Heitor took his feet off his desk and turned toward Marcelina,
seemingly filling two-thirds of his office, capoeira queen, haloed in
success.
"Well done, Marcelina."
He did not hug her to his big, bear body in its gray suit. It was not
that kind of relationship.
"What are your shifts like this afternoon?" Cafe Barbosa:
always a sign somewhere. Thank you, Our Lady of Production Values.
"Early evening bulletin and the main seven o'clock."
Heitor the depressive news reader was a media joke far beyond Canal
Quatro, but Marcelina knew that his sweet, contemplative melancholy
was not caused by the constant rain of sensationalist, violent,
celebrity-obsessed news that blew through his life, but because he
felt responsible for it. He was Death invited to a nation's TV
dinners. Marcelina, in contrast, was quite happy to pursue a career
of insignificant triviality.
"Here's what going to happen. I have an appointment with a
needle. I go to the Cafe Barbosa with my team, my alt dot family and
anyone else who wants to buy me a beer. You come round, we go on to
Lapa. We go back to yours. I fuck the ass off you. Bur
editor Elizabeth Benedict